Use This Tool To Find Your Climate-Change Twin City

February 24, 2019

Without intervention, climate change will affect virtually every facet of our lives. Sometimes, the easiest way to understand something and its impact is by way of comparison. That’s the thinking behind an interactive tool that looks 60 years into the future to find each city’s climate-change twin city.

Developed by Matthew C. Fitzpatrick & Robert R. Dunn and detailed in a study published in Nature Communications, the tool shows its users which city’s current weather is the closest analog to what conditions will feel like in 2080.

For instance, if emissions don’t change, by 2080, New York will feel like Jonesboro, Arkansas, where summers are 9.1 degrees warmer and 20.8% drier than summers in the Big Apple. Miami will feel more like San Blas Atempo, Mexico, where winters are 11.3 degrees warmer and 91.5% drier. And so on.

“Within the lifetime of children living today, the climate of many regions is projected to change from the familiar to conditions unlike those experienced in the same place by their parents, grandparents, or perhaps any generation in millenia,” say the study’s authors. “While scientists share great concern for the expected severe impacts of climate change, the same is not necessarily true of the general public. At the same time, decision makers have not formalized climate adaptation plans for a large proportion of major cities, and existing efforts often are considered insufficient to avoid social, environmental, and economic consequences of climate change.”

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